DURCH: A danced alphabet with graphic silhouettes to reinvent communication

As part of its Art & Communication programme, Flux Laboratory welcomed Swiss artist Cerise Rossier in residence to work on her project for a danced alphabet: DURCH* (across in German).

Each letter of the DURCH alphabet represents a stylised silhouette, a body in movement, and follows the construction of the modern Latin alphabet without resembling it. It is both a graphic research and a resolutely dynamic approach anchored in the body in movement. Placed end to end, these letters are choreographed to form words, sentences, a message.

The human body enters into dialogue with the machine, in this case a computer that projects the alphabet mechanically. The writing becomes a dance that extracts itself from the dictatorship of the computer, and arouses questions and the desire to understand in the spectator, who is invited to question everything he knows about writing and language.

DURCH is a dance-performance that questions our habits of language and listening.

*The project is called DURCH because it borrows the symbolism of medium from the German word [through, by, via]: it is through the body that a new tool for sensitive communication is to be found. DURCH is a project of "human motion graphism", a working method that Cerise Rossier has been developing for several years now.